How smart meters is helping Bengaluru save water

Households and companies can save more than 35% water by changing their habits and fixing leaks reported by the metersIpsita Basu | ET Bureau | Updated: September 14, 2016, 08:38 IST

Anand Kumar, 41, is a water-happy man. From paying Rs 9,600 per quarter as maintenance charges for his flat in HSR Layout, his expenses have gone down to Rs 5,000.

The Hewlett Packard professional now pays for water depending on how much his family of four uses. It is a year since he installed a smart water meter for his apartment.

"The smart water meter helps us control monthly consumption, gives alerts on any leakage, all through an app," shares Kumar.

Vivek Shukla, CEO of SmarterHomes Technologies, a maker of IoT water meters, says data indicate that households save more than 35% water by changing their habits and fixing leaks that are reported by the meters. "Besides cutting supply in case of a leak, the app tracks the consumption data. This makes people conscious about optimizing use," he says.

Water meters also preset consumption depending on the size of the family. As Rajesh Kavungal Anattu, 44, who lives in a villa complex in Golden Homes, Attibele, says, "Smart water meters let you establish a cutoff limit, exceeding which the supply shuts at a tap of the smartphone."

According to Anu Sridharan, cofounder of Nextdrop, which works on intelligent water management, about 20% to 40% water in the city is wasted due to faulty pipes and networks. Apartment complexes and homes too lose 5% to 20% of water depending on how old their utilities are.

Nextdrop, which started an sms alert service in 2014 to track water supply , is launching two smart devices to help large and small apartment complexes track inflow and outflow of water supplied by tankers. "We want to plug any bulk leakages," says Sridharan. The company's tanker water monitoring device for complexes and smart meters for individual homes also hope to raise valuable water consumption data on cloud based servers to help policy makers on water-related decisions. "We are starting this as a pilot in Bengaluru and hope to scale to other cities in India and globally to help water management," adds Sridharan.

Infosys installed over 100 water meters in its Bengaluru campus. According to Guruprakash Sastry , Regional Manager, Infrastructure and Green initiatives, Infosys, there has been a 12% reduction per capita water consumption across various campuses of the company where these were installed. Water consumption, he said, was 25 litres per person per day, (16 litres fresh water, 9 litres recycled water). "We have been able to set new standards because we are able to measure our consumption accurately," he emphasises, adding "We have found through experience that full-bore electromagnetic meters are the most accurate," says Sastry .